Kudos to Danny

[mctyson]

Danny drafted Rondo.

Danny drafted AB.

Danny stole Bass from Orlando for a bag of donuts (literally.)

Danny signed Rondo long term to a reasonable contract.
 
Danny got a first round pick and a young talent (J Green) for a center ranked 55th out of 57 centers in PER (yes just 2 spots above Ryan Hollins.)
 
We have 2 1st rounders in a great draft.
 
Danny signed Greg Stiesma and Mickael Pietrus.

Danny got this team's salary structure in position to have its most cap space in my lifetime.

Danny held pat when the easy thing would have been to trade every vet on the roster for draft picks, and the team responded.

And this doesn't even touch the Ray/KG acquisitions and all the success this team has had.

He has made plenty of mistakes of course.  But I wouldn't want any other GM in the league managing the Celtics.

[mr. dee]

Bring Pitino back!!

[clover]

Danny drafted Rondo.

Danny drafted AB.

Danny stole Bass from Orlando for a bag of donuts (literally.)

Danny signed Rondo long term to a reasonable contract.
 
Danny got a first round pick and a young talent (J Green) for a center ranked 55th out of 57 centers in PER (yes just 2 spots above Ryan Hollins.)
 
We have 2 1st rounders in a great draft.
 
Danny signed Greg Stiesma and Mickael Pietrus.

Danny got this team's salary structure in position to have its most cap space in my lifetime.

Danny held pat when the easy thing would have been to trade every vet on the roster for draft picks, and the team responded.

And this doesn't even touch the Ray/KG acquisitions and all the success this team has had.

He has made plenty of mistakes of course.  But I wouldn't want any other GM in the league managing the Celtics.

I'm not so sure about not wanting any other GM in the league, but I agree: Danny's moves are looking better by the week here.

[manl_lui]

I'm comfortable with Danny as my GM, the Lakers GM isn't bad...not so sure if Pat Riley is a good GM or not, their Big 3 basically got together way before that...if the Cavs had the cap room or some other team with that big a cap room, they probably would've went there as well

[RyNye]

Danny is definitely one of the best GMs in the league.

Grading GMs is one of the most difficult things to do, because a lot of it is so subjective, and there are so many factors beyond the GMs control.

That said, Danny is up there. The other great front offices in the league, in my opinion, are the Lakers (blech, only because they literally could get away with murder), the Pacers, the Nuggets (George Karl is just a terrible coach for this team, their front office has made great decisions), and the Rockets.

I leave out the Heat, because I question Pat Riley's real competence. He more or less got lucky with Dwyane Wade being best friends with James and Bosh, so I am hesitant to give him all the credit for that.

I also leave out the Thunder. I honestly don't think Sam Presti is all that good. He's not bad, he's completely average. All the decisions he has made are pretty textbook. He drafted well, but it's hard to tell how much of that was luck. The Thunder are a great team, yes, but I am hesitant to give all that credit to Presti. I think the locker-room personality of the team is just encouraging overachieving by Harden, Ibaka, etc.

[LooseCannon]

That said, Danny is up there. The other great front offices in the league, in my opinion, are the Lakers (blech, only because they literally could get away with murder), the Pacers, the Nuggets (George Karl is just a terrible coach for this team, their front office has made great decisions), and the Rockets.

I'm going to disagree.  I think the Nuggets are the epitome of the treadmill of mediocrity because they keep handing out bad long-term contracts to players such as Aaron Afflalo, Al Harrington, Chris Andersen, and Wilson Chandler.  The swag bag they got for Carmelo Anthony has more to do with the Knicks being stupid than the Nuggets having a great front office.

[rav123]

Danny is definitely one of the best GMs in the league.

Grading GMs is one of the most difficult things to do, because a lot of it is so subjective, and there are so many factors beyond the GMs control.

That said, Danny is up there. The other great front offices in the league, in my opinion, are the Lakers (blech, only because they literally could get away with murder), the Pacers, the Nuggets (George Karl is just a terrible coach for this team, their front office has made great decisions), and the Rockets.

I leave out the Heat, because I question Pat Riley's real competence. He more or less got lucky with Dwyane Wade being best friends with James and Bosh, so I am hesitant to give him all the credit for that.

I also leave out the Thunder. I honestly don't think Sam Presti is all that good. He's not bad, he's completely average. All the decisions he has made are pretty textbook. He drafted well, but it's hard to tell how much of that was luck. The Thunder are a great team, yes, but I am hesitant to give all that credit to Presti. I think the locker-room personality of the team is just encouraging overachieving by Harden, Ibaka, etc.

I'm sure it was just an oversight on your part, but you left out the Spurs. Portland did pretty well too; they just had terrible luck with injuries. The Rockets have a decent front office too.

I also disagree with you regarding Presti. Those moves are the 'textbook' moves because they're the best ones. If every GM made textbook moves, most every GM would have a great team. In addition, Presti has made plenty of shrewd decisions (for one, he frontloaded Collison's contract so that Westbrook, Durant, Harden could be extended easily).

[bdm860]

not so sure if Pat Riley is a good GM or not, their Big 3 basically got together way before that...

I leave out the Heat, because I question Pat Riley's real competence. He more or less got lucky with Dwyane Wade being best friends with James and Bosh, so I am hesitant to give him all the credit for that.

You guys know Riley's career with the Heat started before LeBron and Bosh got there, right?

He started with them in '95, the Heat had just won 32 games, basically still an expansion team with only 1 winning season in their 7 years of existence (and that was barely a winning season with only 42 wins). Made trades to get Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway, and had a 62 win team in his 2nd season after taking over a 32 win team.  He quickly built a team that was considered a contender for the next 5 years (4 first place Atlantic finishes, top 2 team in Eastern conference, usually only behind Jordan's Bulls).

When that team finally broke down, they had only 2 losing seasons (and one decent season when Riley drafted Wade) before trading for Shaq and trading/signing for several other veterans, becoming a contender again, and winning the whole thing in 2006.

Then that team broke down, the Heat had one terrible season, and 2 decent ones, then rebuilt again into a contender.

So in 17 years, he's built 3 different, legitimate contending teams with the Heat, and you guys won't give him credit because the creation of one of those teams might have been orchestrated by somebody else (he just lucked into all that cap room too I suppose)?

Riley has traded/signed/drafted several key players before LeBron came to town that worked well for the Heat:

Alonzo Mourning
Tim Hardaway
Chris Gatling
Dan Majerle
P.J. Brown
Jamal Mashburn
Voshon Lenard
Eddie Jones
Anthony Mason
Brian Grant
Lamar Odom
Antoine Walker
James Posey
Jason Williams
Gary Payton
Shaquille O'Neal
Jason Kapono
Caron Butler
Dwyane Wade
Udonis Haslem

How many bad signings/trades has Riley made since '95?  How come the time it takes them to rebuild is always so short?  Miami, while a nice city, was never really a top player destination until LeBron decided to go there.  Their only significant signing was Juwan Howard in '96, and that was voided by the league.  Players weren't demanding trades to Miami, like Carmelo, Paul, and Dwight have been demanding to go to certain cities.  Riley is a pretty good GM.

[jdz101]

Bring Pitino back!!

We don't say his name round these parts no more...

[LeoMoreno]

Bring Pitino back!!

We don't say his name round these parts no more...

So what do we call him? The Destruktor?